Long-Distance Sculling Plan

Expansion Plan of Long-Distance Rowing / Sculling

Coming from a background of an being an avid sports woman in the sports of tennis, extreme catamaran sailing, snow skiing, competition mountain biking, century road cycling (100 mile events), heavy weight training and a long-time long-distance sculler — and from so many years of running an intense boot camp-like health retreat, I am extremely conscious of the importance of a consistent lifestyle of exercise and fitness as being essential to human well-being.

I initially began sculling to cross-train in my quest to break past my frustrating performance limitations in cycling. Then I started to back off of cycling as my main sport upon hearing more and more reports of people being seriously injured and killed getting hit by cars. In addition to the contribution of drunk drivers to these tragedies, I believe the advent of texting and driving has made road biking a real risk. That’s one reason I switched my main endurance sport to sculling. It’s a full body, low impact workout and it is SAFE!

I am sure I am not the only Master’s Endurance Athlete for whom long distance sculling is ideal for either cross-training or entirely switching to a sport that is safer, works the whole body and all the joints. It’s not only an elegant, high-skill, highly rewarding sport, it’s physical therapy for those of us who have thrown ourselves around crashing, jarring our joints and injuring ourselves over a life-time of various extreme sports pursuits. Low-and-behold, as we age … no matter how strong our muscles are or how much endurance we have … we discover our biggest limitation now is fragile joints!!!!

Long-distance Sculling is the perfect next sport for hundreds of thousands of Master’s Athletes who don’t even realize it and have no access to getting into it. So my long-distance sculling plan is geared toward simultaneously raising the awareness of this wonderful sport to benefit endurance athletes all over the world while drawing attention to The Cosmos Global Solution. My hope is to influence the expansion the sport of sculling/rowing in the direction of long-distance (both flat and open water). As a part of this plan, I have set the goal to break the world long-distance sculling record. I have trained to the point of being able to row 50 miles distance-wise and will continue to build up mileage from there. However, time-wise, I will not be able to begin to work seriously toward accomplishing this goal until I am able to find a partner(s) to prototype mynew boatdesign. For a single sculler to beat the record set by three men in a treble scull, the boat will have to be considerably faster than a conventional racing shell.

Point of information: the words rowing and sculling are used interchangeably but technically sculling involves two oars and rowing is one oar with a crew, usually four or eight with a coxswain.

Open water rowing and long-distance rowing is the fastest growing expansion area of sport steeped in tradition. Just as mountain biking expanded the sport of cycling, expanding the sport of rowing in this direction will have the same impact. The advent of mountain biking only 25 years ago has sparked the innovation of entirely different geometry, materials, components and construction parameters for the bikes as well as an entirely different style of riding. They both involve bikes, but as a former competition mountain biker and seasoned road century cyclist, I can tell you they are two different sports! Mountain biking has probably more than doubled the equally traditionally steeped sport of cycling in this short amount of time. The same can be done with rowing/sculling,

Just by the nature of the distances involved and the variables of weather and traffic conditions, long-distance rowing will be a hybrid of flat-water sculling and open-water sculling and will require open-water-worthy boats and for scullers to aquire open-water rowing skills. The market for this is:

• Marathon runners, tri-athletes, century cyclists … looking for a sport that does not risk their lives or ruin their joints — that they can do well into their senior years

• Established sculler/rowers who want to take their participation in the sport to another level

• People who are mesmerized by the elegance and beauty of sculling and rowing and want to enter the sport in a way that is accessible and embracing.

• Novice high school and college athletes and teams with possible Olympic aspirations to gain an unprecedented competitive edge.

• Cities and countries wishing to raise their status in the world by supporting, hosting and excelling in one of the most elegant and fastest growing sports on the globe.

I know from experience in the medical field that governing entities are often initially self-appointed. Therefore, The Global Rowing Club could become the promoting and standard-setting entity for the expansion of the sport of long-distance rowing world-wide.

Consequently, innovation of boats to be appropriate for an entirely different objective in the sport of rowing could be “sanctioned” by the entity that rules the new sport.

As mentioned above, I have several rowing-related inventions already prototyped and well-tested and a couple of versions of rowing machines that will train not only for strength but for balance and form that I want to prototype and get on the market as soon as possible. Once I have these products available, promoting long-distance rowing as a booming expansion-area of the sport of rowing worldwide will be a large financial boost to raising the funding for developing The Cosmos.

Once my rowing products are available I then hope to work with with rowing clubs all over the country and beyond, to visit and hold long-distance sculling clinics and long-distance rowing events to draw in participants from near-bye clubs at first, then father afield as the events become established. This will be appealing to a lot of people who wish they could stay in their boats longer, but haven’t solved the problems for how to do it logistically. I have.

Conducting these clinics would not only involve divulging my secrets for how to stay in the boat for long periods of time, but also demonstrating my free-weight, body-weight and isometric training techniques that build the necessary muscles for the kind of strength and endurance that is called for in rowing marathons.

While visiting rowing clubs to hold clinics, part of the program could be holding an informal long-distance row, say a 50 miler … perhaps a 25 mile out-and-back where anyone who wants to participate can put in at various places along the course to row predetermined distances according to their abilities. Or probably a better idea would be a 12.5 mile out and back (on rivers) going two directions with the rowing club in the center, giving participants two times to start if they want to row along with me: when I start and when I pass the rowing club halfway through. If it is held on a Sunday after a Saturday clinic and they purchase some of my accessories, they may find they can row many more miles immediately. We could arrange to video these weekends and I would post them on the website edited into fun and amusing mini-documentaries also available on my YouTube Channel.

From doing this at numerous clubs that are located on conducive bodies of water, regular yearly events would inevitably evolve that would be “sanctioned” Global Rowing Club events. This would provide the impetus for growth in sales of all boats, from elite flat racers to open water and recreational boats: that there are more events to appeal to and draw in the vast market of long-distance endurance athletes looking for cross-training and new challenges, and don’t hesitate to purchase top-of-the-line equipment.

Another project ahead is to establish a “Bed & Breakfast & Rowing” resort with a large genteel house or small charming hotel and additional cabins for guests to stay on-sight — that not only offers instruction and training in rowing for Juniors to Masters from all over the world, but offers the benefits of my health retreat background, an organic cafe, a work-shop staffed with capable artisans for maintaining, refurbishing and fine-tuning our center’s and guest’s boats, a resident rigging expert, a fleet of sculls and sweeps fully equipped with Speed Coaches and additional fitness training and recreational options … on a sizable lake. I searched for a place like that to go last year as a guest, and it does not exist. Therefore, such a center located in a strategic year-round destination would have a world-wide draw.

Advertisements

Share this:

Like this:

LikeLoading...

2 responses

Colm.

Hi there,

I’m really interested in your concept.
I’m planning a 50 mile row across the Irish Sea next summer (2016).
I was particularly interested in the last paragraph about Bed and Breakfast and rowing.
I think I’ve found the place you think doesn’t exist.
Checkout “Chour, Wexford, Ireland” on Google Earth.
Right on the sea but with a sizeable lake right beside the sea, with bed and breakfast or self catering accommodation.
Let me know what you think.
Best of luck.
Colm,
(Ireland)

I wish you the best of luck with your grand goal to traverse the Irish sea. I will Investigate Chour and wish I could go there and row. Unfortunately, my rowing career has been temporarily… Or permanently halted by the necessity of having a hip replacement from overdoing my long-distance sports. Live and learn!

I don’t know how old you are and how much endurance sports you have done in your life, but I plead with you to supplement and care for your joints.